New work from Carnegie’s Scott Shep­pard and Chad­wick Tru­jillo of the Gem­ini Obser­va­tory reports the dis­cov­ery of a dis­tant dwarf planet, called 2012VP113, which was found beyond the known edge of the solar sys­tem. This is likely one of thou­sands of dis­tant objects that are thought to form the so-​called inner Oort cloud. What’s more, their work indi­cates the poten­tial pres­ence of an enor­mous planet, per­haps up to 10 times the size of Earth, not yet seen, but pos­si­bly influ­enc­ing the orbit of 2012VP113, as well as other inner Oort cloud objects.

The dis­cov­ery images of 2012VP113 (affec­tion­ately nick­named “Biden” because of the VP in the pro­vi­sional name). It has the most dis­tant orbit known in our Solar Sys­tem. Three images of the night sky, each taken about 2 hours apart, were com­bined into one. The first image was arti­fi­cially col­ored red, sec­ond green and third blue. 2012VP113 moved between each image as seen by the red, green and blue dots. The back­ground stars and galax­ies did not move and thus their red, green and blue images com­bine to show up as white sources. Image credit: Carnegie Insti­tute for Sci­ence Read More

Mag­netic Motors, Overunity and lim­it­less Energy from the Vac­uum Ander­son holds a degree in Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing from the Chubb Insti­tute (class of 1999). Lec­turer on Non-​Conventional Energy and Propul­sion Systems

“When the tyrant has dis­posed of for­eign ene­mies by con­quest or treaty and there is noth­ing to fear from them, then he is always stir­ring up some war or other, in order that the peo­ple may require a leader” – Plato